CHAPTER 16

PULLING THE WOOL OVER OUR EYES AS WE SINK FURTHER INTO THE WATER

  The wind continued to howl and the voice emanating from within it still haunted Boris; this voice seemed to come from all directions and Boris looked all about for their owners.

  As Boris was doing this, a very distinguished man--who Boris later found out was the Chief Tweedle Elect--came running through the wood with both hands up in triumph, and quickly shook hands with Boris and then flew off just as fast as he came.

   Behind him, in his wake, came Mr. Walter Pigeon, who plopped himself before Boris with his hair all awry.

   Walter only looked at him in a helpless frightened sort of way and kept repeating something in a whisper to himself that sounded like that dreaded four-letter word all good children are taught to eschew, and Boris felt that, if there was to be any conversation at all, he must manage it himself. So he began rather timidly, "Have I heard you say the dreaded four-letter word."

   "You did indeed!" said the slowly recovering Walter.

   "Well, I never! I thought you were the last person to swear."

   "Swear! Swear! I swear I am not swearing. I am merely repeating that dreaded word FOCA, FOCA."

   "There you go again, my word!"

   "Ho, ho. I am not telling you to F---off, but I am saying F-O-C-A."

   "Oh, FOCA!'

   "Now, you're doing it!"

   "Ho, ho, I am sorry."

   "Yes, we can laugh for a while, but if that FOCA Bill of the new Chief Tweedle-Elect goes through then there will be no hope left for the Eggs."

   "Why is that?"

   "Why, if the last Chief Tweedle only stalled at doing anything to save the Eggs, this new Chief is a positive promoter of Egg Stealing: the first thing he promised to do is to make a law that will force all good Pigeons to help the snakes gather up the Eggs!"

   "No! That can't be!"

   "It certainly is!"

   "Oh no, this new wind is pulling us apart. Help me, Walter."

   And soon Mr. Walter Pigeon was gone--at least his body--to be replaced by the Chief Tweedle Elect who whirled about and about Boris. This was making poor Boris dizzy, so he caught the Chief by his shoulders and pulled him toward himself to, what in effect was, the eye of a Hurricane.

   "Thank you, my good man," the Chief said in a deep mellifluous voice, "You seem to be a point of stability in this whirling, changing and dynamic new world of mine. Though I like this world, it is somewhat wearisome to be always caught in its whirlwind. Yes, yes, I will hire you as my 'calm eye in the whirling hurricane.'

   "Thank you, but..."

   "Not buts in my world. I'll give you all the bread and butter you want and spam every other day."

   "I don't want you to hire me--and I don't care for spam."

   "It's very good spam," said the Chief.

   "Well, I don't want any today, at any rate."

   "You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Chief said. "The rule is, spam tomorrow and spam yesterday--but never spam today."

   "It must come sometimes to 'spam today,'" Boris objected.

   "No, it can't," said the Chief. "It's spam every other day; today isn't any other day, you know."

   "I don't understand you," said Boris. "It's dreadfully confusing!"

   "That's Federal Budgeting for you: this way we can promise all kinds of things, but we don't have to pay for any of it; very fiscally responsible, don't you think?"

   "I don't think so..."

   "That's the effect of working backwards," the Chief said kindly. "It always makes one a little giddy at first, but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways."

   "I'm sure mine only works one way," Boris remarked. "I can't remember things before they happen."

   "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward, "the Chief remarked.

   "What sort of things do you remember best?"

   "Oh, things that happen the week after next," the Chief replied in a careless tone. "For instance, now," he went on, as he held unto Boris to keep from being pulled back into his own whirlwind, "there's Mister Walter Pigeon. He's in prison now, being punished; and the trial doesn't even begin until next Wednesday; and of course, the crime comes last of all."

    "Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Boris.

    "That would be all the better, wouldn't it?"

   "Well..."

   "Were you ever punished?"

   "Only for faults."

   "And you were all the better for it it, I know."

   "But then I had done the things I was punished for."

   "All the better, all the better!" the Chief repeated over and over.

   "But he must do something before he's punished!"

   "Oh, very well. If you insist, we can help our poor prisoner's deficiency in that area by doing him the favour of creating a law that he has surely broken in the past: like, I suppose, flying in a northwesterly direction; why, who would ever want to go in that direction, anyway: that would be a most useful law, I should think."

   Boris was just beginning to say, "There's a mistake somewhere--"

   "It's a very simply process. Here, let me give you another example of working backwards."

   "More examples won't..."

   But the Chief didn't hear Boris, who Boris thought liked to hear his own voice. The Chief continued on with another example of this backwards thinking, "These days Youngsters first have a little sex, then a little inner growth, and then comes an officially sanctioned union of some sort--well even sometimes this step is skipped--and then they vow their eternal love--well maybe they do this--with babies and houses and mortgages somewhere in there, doing all this with each other, or each with others, if at all, well sometimes, well sometimes never..."

   "I should think that that's a quite intolerable situation; shouldn't there be a serious commitment to each other before they do anything else?"

   "But how can they commit to each other when there's nothing substantial for them to commit to: now they can have strong feelings--and maybe some inner growth--to cement their relationship."

   "But what if, after all that, they still can't commit and they now have a little growth?"

   "Well, you know what happens: they can forgo their inner growth and suppress these things into the dark wilderness..."

   Boris thought, "Is the Chief talking about psychoanalysis or abortion; or perhaps he is talking about both, for both, in effect, force us into a dark abyss filled with snakes; and indeed abortion has an immediate unconscious effect on woman that later manifests outward into nightmarish realities that ever haunt them." So Boris responded to the Chief in an equally bi-literally, saying, "And let the snakes take care of it..."

   But the Chief didn't hear Boris and continued, "...and soon all their past actions will become unconscious."

   Boris objected, "I find that an unconscionable situation."

   Perhaps the Chief--being a little hard of hearing or perhaps making some Freudian slip or both--really showed his true colors when he said, "I dare say you haven't had much practice at doing unconscionable things. When I was a Tweedle, I always did them for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've committed as many as six unconscionable things before breakfast!"

   "Oh, now, I know that I surely don't want to work for you," said Boris as he tried to wrench free from the Chief's tight grip.

   It was hard work, but Boris eventually succeeded and just as Boris did this, the whirlwind took up the Chief in its wild winds and he was gone in a moment. Not only did the storm get the Chief, but it seemed that quite soon the storm would have taken Boris also in its wake.

   However, quite suddenly, everything calmed down and a small store slowly materialized before the eyes of the surprised Boris. Boris rubbed his eyes, and looked again.  He couldn't make out what happened at all. Was he in a shop? And what was that thing sitting behind the counter. It looked like an old rabbit sitting in an airmchair knitting--gloves it looked liked to Boris--and every now and then leaving off to look at him through a great pair of spectacles.

   The shop was dark and Boris leaned on the counter to take a good look at the Rabbit. Boris knew that he should distrust this Rabbit for some reason, but all the struggling about with the wind had jiggled his brain about somewhat and he couldn't quite use it properly at the moment.

   "What is it you want to buy?" the Rabbit said at last.

   "I don't quite know yet. I should like to look all round me at first, if I might."

   "You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like, but you can't look all round you--unless you've got eyes at the back of your head."

   Boris laughed to himself, for he thought that this piece of advice was also useful for believers in Elitists Running the World type Conspiracies: for you can look at these conspiracies from certain perspectives, but you could never get a good look at them from all sides at once.

   After a while, Boris came out of his revery and commenced to looked at all the shelves as he came to them.       

   The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things--but the oddest part of it all was whenever he looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what was on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty; though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.

   "Things flow about so here!" he said at last in a plaintive tone, after he had spent a minute or two in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes as a motorbike and sometimes like a red racing car, and was always in the shelf next above the one he was looking at.

    This made Boris think, "Is this shop trying to tell me something about the evil snaky Elitists.  Then exactly what?  Are the things in this shop ideas,  and, therefore, this shop represents conspiracies that the common folk can never properly get a handle on; or are the things commodities, and therefore this shop represents ever running after this thing and that, but never really being satisfied; or perhaps it represents the economy, and therefore this shop represents an economy that seems working and full, but which is really, after all, only on its last legs and empty; or perhaps it represents of all the above, for the snakes, as a whole, are a many-headed monster that ensnares the Pigeons with all type of devious device."

    Then the Rabbit commented on the espying of Boris, "You'll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round like that."

   "But it's not me that's turning; it's the shop that's turning: that is, turning into other things," Boris commented, but he stopped when he looked at the Rabbit in great astonishment and saw that he was now working with fifty pairs of gloves at once and thought to himself, "How can it knit so many? He gets more and more like a many handed--and many headed--hydra all the time!"

    "Can you row?" the Rabbit asked, handing him a pair of knitting needles as he spoke.

    "Well, a little...," Boris was beginning to say when suddenly the needles turned into oars in his hands and he found that he was in little boat gliding along between banks.

   Then Boris saw something on the banks and exclaimed, "Oh please! There are my parents and my sister! And they are playing in the Garden with Catlan! Oh, please, may we row there and meet them?"

   "You needn't say please to me about em. It will be my pleasure to take you there."

    So the Rabbit rowed the boat to shore. Once there, Boris jumped out of the boat, and with a quick bound and a skip, he was soon in the arms of his loving family and they were all smiles.

   But just as soon was he was feeling delight from his reunion with his family, they disappeared from his grip, and all that Boris now hugged was thin air.

   But soon Boris saw them in the distance, and he surmised that they must be playing a game with him and therefore he ran after them, but this this time he didn't even reach his parents at all, but instantly got hold of only an another armful of thin air.

   "Oh, what kind of game is my family playing on me? Seems a little mischievous, but I will play along. Oh, there they are again." 

   And Boris once again ran toward his parents, but soon they vanished again; but now Boris found himself up to his hips in slimy mud!

   Then he once again saw his loved ones far off in the distance and now he struggled for dear life for every step, getting more and more bogged down in this exasperating mire.

   Then Misses Wilma Pigeon flew by and said to Boris, "Don't chase them; they are only phantoms."

   "No, they are real."

   "You will only get more and more bogged down in this mud."

   "Oh, go away, you interfering old bird."

   She quickly complied, and after she she had flown away, Boris continued on, and he indeed got more and more bogged down in the mud, until the only part of his body showing was his head and this too was going down fast until all that was left was his open mouth.

   Fortunately for Boris, his mouth was the only part of him that still had some sense, for it was now calling out, "Oh, dear sweet Catlan, Help!"

   Very soon, he felt many little pricklings all over his body as if many tiny feet had grabbed hold of his clothes, and they were indeed many feet, for they were the many cute little feet of Grandma Pigeon's little grandchildren who had now grabbed hold of poor unconscious-and-inabled Boris and were now heaving him out the muggy mud. Soon he was out, and being lifted merrily through the air until they got to firm land where he was gently deposited and where Boris now lay himself down to sleep.

   After a long while, he woke up, refreshed, but still a little groggy, and opening one eye, he espied from his ground level perspective a high wall with  a rather large Egg on it.  "Oh, now, I am dreaming of Eggs. Well, I can thank my lucky stars that some of the pretty little Eggs of Misses Walter Pigeon had been saved in the past and had had the opportunity to grow up to be strong enough, and gracious enough, to save this pretty little donkey--a.k.a. an ass--who, apparently, didn't have enough sense, and enough will, and enough trust in his friends, and even the ultimate Friend, to tell a Jack Rabbit from a Parent; yes, thank God, one and all!

   "What am I saying!  These birds have a reason to live just because they were created in the first place and they don't need a function--like saving hapless boys from sinking into the dangerous mud--to justify their existence. So simply Thank God for God creating them!

    "Well, now what about that large Egg?"